Goddesses Pt. 02

She chuckled softly, running a hand over the curve of my thigh. "I am thoroughly satisfied. You are a very powerful goddess... you mother will be proud when I tell her how well you made love to me." Feeling a hollow satisfaction I nodded my head, though I wouldn't have called what I'd done to her 'making love'.

After a quiet moment she rose. "Now you may have your rest. If you could just get off the bed for a moment, I will change the sheets?" She handed me one of the towels she'd brought, then began to wipe herself down with another.

"Sure, of course Lina." I was just glad that it was over.

Chapter 5

The next morning I sheepishly descended the stairs to the upper floors, dressed in a purple robe which Lina had brought for me that night me with the fresh beddings. The buttery smell of pancakes cooking was in the air, and sunlight shone through the windows, illuminating what had been a rather dark home.

"Goodmorning, darling," Marla said to me with a bright smile. She was seated at the dining room table, a cup of coffee in her hand and an open laptop before her. "Did you sleep well?"

I sat down across from her, my eyes still puffy from my rest. "Yes, extremely. The mattress in your bed is perfect, and I was exhausted." Marla nodded and clicked her mouse, that satisfied smile still on her face.

Lina came from the kitchen, and for the first time I saw her fully dressed. She set a cup and saucer of coffee in front of me, along with the usual little jug of cream and sugar cubes. For a moment we shared a look, and while mine was probably just groggy hers was sly and knowing, a silent comment on what we'd done the previous night.

I felt a swell of shame, of embarrassment. It made me more alert than the caffeine in my coffee ever could.

Once she had again returned to the kitchen Marla leaned closer, speaking privately. "Thank you for taking her off my hands for a night. Finally, I had a moment to get through some of my paper work!" She gave a rich chuckle and then sat back, taking a sip of her coffee.

"Hmph." I started to stab at the sugar cubes in my cup, breaking them down.

"Did... did you not enjoy yourself...?"

I shrugged distantly, my gaze still lowered. Oh, I must have seemed like such a moody teenager!

Her tone was hurt, as if I'd rejected a gift."Really...? But... Lina is extremely good."

"I don't really want to talk about it."

"Darling, please. I'm... I'm your mother, you can confide in me. What's wrong?"

I'm really not a morning person. I might have conducted myself better if she'd given me a few hours to get my head straight. At that moment I was irritable and my wounds were fresh. "What's wrong? What's wrong is someone coming into my room and pressuring me into sex! What's wrong is the things I was twisted into doing last night. I'm not that kind of girl, mom."

Marla was just staring, wholly unprepared for my outburst.

With tears welling in my eyes I stood, leaving the table to march back up to my room. "And... and I'll be damned if that means I can't help our race!"

***

Hours later I'd had time to process my thoughts and feelings on the entire situation. I wasn't any happier and I wasn't yet sure what I was going to do but I at least wasn't going to have any more outbursts of emotion.

I was sitting by the bedroom window, dressed in a soft sweater and a close-fit skirt. Now that it was light outside I could enjoy the view my room offered, a blanket of snowy pine and spruce along the downward slope of the mountain. I dejectedly pictured myself climbing higher up, to see more of the alpine landscape around me as I ascended towards gentle, frigid solitude.

There was a gentle knock at my door.

"Who is it?"

"It's me, darling."

"...Come in."

Marla entered, smiling warmly. She held a plate stacked with pancakes, dripping with butter and sirop. She set it on top of a nearby dresser. "They were better when they were fresh off the griddle, but anyway. I don't want you going hungry here."

I nodded. "Thanks... mum."

She chuckled softly as she sat herself down at the foot of the bed, close enough that our knees were touching. "No problem, darling. Geez, no one's ever called me that."

"Uhm... I want to apologize for what I said to you earlier. I shouldn't have been so disrespectful to you."

"Oh, well, think nothing of it darling," she said as she gave my knee a friendly squeeze. "We're just getting to know each other. Things can get a little rocky at first as we learn our boundaries. I didn't realize you wouldn't want our, ah... that sort of hospitality. My mistake. In fact I also owe you an apology, for being so presumptuous."

"Thank you."

We had a moment of silence to appreciate the understanding we'd just reached.

She then gently said, "I look at you and I see a bit of Jessica, but mostly myself. You look practically like a carbon copy of me, like a taller twin sister. So, Eva... daughter... tell me. What is it that makes you so different from all of the other goddesses? Do you feel any of our innate imperatives at all?"

"No, I don't. I don't really understand what the 'instinctual' thing is all about, actually. I've never felt it."

"That's very interesting."

I nodded, managing a half-smile. "That's what Diana said, too. I'm sorry if that means I can't help our race. I'm just not made of the same stuff as you and my sisters."

"Well hold on a second. Maybe you still can. I think I'm having a moment of clarity here! It must be the coffee."

"Uh... okay?"

"Yeah. Look, maybe there is a benefit in there being a goddess with your point of view. Maybe myself and the rest of us are so blinded by our base need to reproduce that we are missing out on... more creative, or subtle ways to further our cause. All those times I've said that we need to, first and foremost, increase our numbers, could have just been instinct talking."

"I think that might be true."

"Yes. So tell me, darling. What else can we do, to change the world for our benefit?"

"I... I don't know. I have a million ideas, actually, but I don't have any favourites."

"Well you've got an eternity to choose and put your plot into motion. But you don't have the funds."

"I guess..."

I hadn't noticed her bringing them in, but out came a chequebook and a pen. "I can help you with that, my... my turbulent little duplicate."

"Mum, I... you don't have to-"

"Shush."

On the line beside 'pay to the order of' she wrote a five, then a zero, then another zero... My jaw began to drop as I watched the sum she was offering me increase by multiples of ten, again and again and again. I had never even dreamt of having that kind of money, yet here she was casually writing me a cheque to her fortune. "Marla, is this a joke? That's way too much! How can you have that much money?"

"Oh, don't worry. I'll still have enough to live like we do, and I'll make this much back by the end of the century." She signed the cheque and tore it out of her book, then handed it to me. "Do something great for us. Something I could have never thought of... Something I'd never have enough time outside the bedroom to pull off."

Chapter 6

That morning in Arizona the scientists and engineers at Astro X awoke to find that the funding they so desperately needed to move forward with their prototype spacecraft had finally appeared -- and then some. All they had to do was hand ownership of the company over to a mysterious 'Dennis Family', who indicated that they would not hinder the expansion of their space program in any way. Under that ownership Astro X would have the funding to build beyond their projected goals, making an entire fleet of full sized spacecraft which featured their revolutionary new quantum drive. To them, it really was a no brainer.

My mom had made it sound like it would be my life's endeavour to spend that money, but I'd forwarded my proposal by lunch. Had I done the right thing, or was I throwing it all away in a hasty move? I figured Astro X were on the forefront of space technology, which was the final frontier of exploration. Wouldn't it be beneficial for ownership of the corporation to be ours?

I was living with my mother and Lina for an indefinite amount of time. It isn't natural for a goddess to stay under the care of her mother, and I could feel tensions in the house building as I lingered still in that spare bedroom, avoiding Lina. I needed to leave that place and go home again, but until the process of buying Astro X was complete I remained.

Two weeks had passed by the time all agreements were finalized. I still wasn't confident in my decision, but finally I could leave. I left copies of the paperwork on my mother's desk, put on my coat and walked out the door.

***

Dear readers, I hope that up to this point I haven't weighed you down with constant descriptions of my grief and confusion. I can promise you that they will end here.

Where was I going? Nowhere in particular. Not back to St. Moritz, where I could catch a bus back to the airport. I was pushing further up the mountain.

I'd given up hope.

The wind was cutting and laced with flecks of ice which stung my cheeks. I squinted my eyes, revealing as little of them as I could, for the chill air was freezing my tears. Leaving my mother's home, I felt more alone than ever. Though we had come to an agreement the fact was that still, I had not found another soul who could understand my own. Worsening the situation still, I feared I had squandered the one chance Marla had given me to help.

Hours spent dejectedly trudging through the deepening snow up into increasingly colder and thinner air had chilled me deeply. I felt weak, but I wasn't yet finished. The peak of the mountain loomed ahead, a seemingly unattainable goal. I undid my coat and shrugged it off, letting it fall to the frozen ground. Clutching my arms against my body I continued, the freezing wind whipping through my hair.

I was a creature without kin, a thing which should not be. I intended to disappear.

Night had come by the time I reached the peak. The darkness and harsh weather prevented me from admiring the vista, but it mattered little, for in my extremely weakened state my vision had dwindled to near blackness. With numbed hands I scratched about, searching for a place to rest. I blindly crawled over sharp rocks and ice, finally finding a sheltering gap in the rocks which the wind couldn't reach. Crawling further inside, I found it was a shallow cave.

As I sat myself down, the cold having already penetrated deep into my bones, I knew that I would no longer feel the sorrow of not belonging. I was becoming sleepy, and my grief was fading, as was the light behind my eyes. Breathing a frozen shuddering sigh of relief I shut them, and the world forgot me.